The Traveling Image Makers

The guest for this week’s episode of the podcast is Karthika Gupta, is a lifestyle, wedding, and travel photographer based in the Chicago area.

We were intrigued by a series of articles she wrote for Digital Photography School and especially one about being a culturally sensitive photographer, with a series of tips that everyone should pay attention to, when traveling to countries whose cultures and traditions differ from ours.

Duration 46m 09s.

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Today we’re going to talk mostly about street photography. Whereas street photography is not necessarily practiced while traveling (many street photographers have actually become famous for portraying the scenes of their hometown), we think that photographing life in the streets goes a long way towards documenting the reality of the cities and countries we visit.

Because of this, we often like to interview people who have chosen to practice this somewhat popular but often misunderstood genre, like our guest of today, Marco Larousse.

Marco is an international analog and digital fine art, street and documentary photographer based in Hamburg, Germany. He has a background in photography of 30+ years. In the 1990’s he developed his passion for classic street and documentary photograph. He shares this passion in his workshops or public speeches on street photography. Marco strives to create a positive awareness for this important art form by documenting contemporary daily life for future generations in a world where cameras in public are increasingly seen as a threat.

Marco is also an accredited journalist and a member at FREELENS. He has also been producing photography related podcasts since 2015. In 2017 he co-founded PPN Photo Podcast Network where he works as editor, host, and producer.

Marco Larousse is very passionate about the power and importance of preserving contemporary visual memories for future generations. The ability to tell a story with only one image is what made photography his preferred outlet to express himself. Capturing unique unposed moments to document our contemporary daily life for future generations is a challenge that keeps him motivated each day. His work has been influenced by the work of Mary Ellen Mark’s style of documenting life with a lot of affection and respect for the subjects that are being photographed.

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Our guest for this edition of the podcast is British travel photographer Matt Widgery.

Besides being a good sport and someone who’s always fun to be around, Matt has a lot of interesting stories to share, starting with the way photography saved him from an alcohol addiction, as he says in his about page:

“Photography basically saved my life. I had a long addiction to alcohol and it nearly destroyed me. But I don’t say this to get sympathy. Today I get to travel all over the world, shooting and teaching in some of the best locations on Earth. I shot in 16 countries last year! My life is beyond amazing and I am so thankful that I was able to discover my passion and use it to create the life I always wanted. The only way I know how to express this gratitude is to pay it forward. Teaching others the skills that gave me this incredible life is such a privilege.”

We also talked with Matt about the country he recently discovered and started loving so much, Greece. If you ever intended to travel and photograph there, check out his Workshops page.

Duration 41m 40s.

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Our guest for this episode of the podcast is Belgian travel photographer Sébastien Beun.

This is what Sébastien says about himself:

"Photography, for me, is a lifelong and everlasting passion. It is what makes me feel emotions, breathe, live. Photography challenges me to share my life, my thoughts, my perception of the world that surrounds me, with others, and to share in their lives as well. From the waterfalls of Iceland, to the mountains of the Alps, the Palazzi of Venice, to a small Maasai village in Tanzania, to watching my children grow, photography is the rhythm to which I live my life.

Photography came to a pause by the time I went to university. I studied dentistry and then started a PhD focusing on possible improvements of restorative dental materials. Once the PhD was completed, I started teaching and I am now professor of restorative dentistry. In 2009, I started photography again but only occasionally, while on vacation. I eventually got back to photography more seriously late 2012 and now travel as much as I can with a camera at hand.

As a photographer I specialize in travel, especially landscape and portraiture. I love to take take photographs for a good cause; this is the why most of my travels are linked to NGO’s or non-profit organizations that try to help people locally. For that reason, since the beginning of 2014 I traveled several times with the Giving Lens, an organization created by my friend Colby Brown that has “a vision to see our three passions come together for a better world: travel, photography and giving back”. The perfect match for me! So far I went to Jordan, Tanzania and Thailand with them.

As a university teacher, I am experienced at educating people. I am available to give talks, lead workshops or provide mentorships about anything related to travel and/or landscape photography."

We chatted with Sébastien about his involvement with humanitarian travel operator The Giving Lens, his recent flight over New York City, and how he manages to make his job, his family life, and his passion for travel photography coexist peacefully.

Duration 38m 02s.

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Nigerian-born Lola Akinmade Åkerström’s photography and travel writing are characterized by vibrancy and hope. Graduating with a Masters (MSc) degree in Information Systems from the University of Maryland with a minor in Geography, she specialized in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for 12+ years and her affinity for the geosciences and maps meant she was born to travel.

She is the 2018 Travel Photographer of the Year Bill Muster Award recipient.

Her work has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, Travel + Leisure, Slate, Travel Channel, Lonely Planet, Fodor’s, National Geographic Channel, several in-flight magazines, New York Times online, amongst others.

Some of her articles and photography have been syndicated on MSNBC, Slate, Yahoo, New York Daily News, Chicago Sun Times, Huffington Post, and Time Warner.

Her latest book is Lagom, The Swedish Secret of Living Well.

Lagom sums up the Swedish psyche and is a way of living that promotes harmony. It celebrates fairness, moderation and being satisfied with what you’ve got. It’s not about having too little or too much but about fully inviting contentment into our lives.

Duration 51m 28s.

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As you might know, we are doing a bi-monthly photo contest on our Facebook group, The Traveling Image Makers' Corner. We invite the group members to submit one of their best photographs and, at the end of the period, we pick two winners and invite them to come on the show and tell us about their winning images and their photography.

The winners for the month of January 2018, Fabian Pfitzinger and Kevin Wenning, submitted photos taken in Wadi Rum, Jordan and Tinmel, Morocco, respectively. We thought those two stood above the rest, but it was a tough choice, since we got so many amazing submissions.

Would you like to be one of the next guests on the podcast? Head over to our Facebook group, ask to join (if you're not already a member) and look for the post pinned to the top for instructions. The contest for the month of March 2018 is already open and we intend to do a new contest every two months. Let’s see your best travel images!

Duration 44m 00s.

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Danielle Da Silva is a director, photographer, public speaker, activist and writer who specialises in sustainable development and psychology. Her main focus is communicating the extraordinary efforts of people around the world working to solve the most challenging problems. Her deepest passions are conserving parklands, fostering equality, and empowering ordinary people to find their power. Danielle is the Founder and CEO of Photographers Without Borders (PWB), a Co-Founder of the Sumatran Wildlife Sanctuary, and is also on the board of the Dandelion Initiative in Toronto.

Danielle is comfortable in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, some Swahili and Indonesian, and can read and write Arabic. She is hoping to familiarise herself with Hindi and ASL as well. Danielle has earned Bachelor of Science Degrees in Conservation Biology, Psychology and Global Studies with Honours from the University of Western Ontario, as well as an MSc. in Environment and Development from the London School of Economics.

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We often get emails and messages from listeners who ask us advice on how to take great travel photos, so this week we wanted to record a special episode. We don’t have the usual interview with a guest this time but decide instead to spend some time giving you our best tips to help you get better photos every time you take a trip.

Some examples of the topics we covered include:

1. The importance of a shot list
2. Telling stories
3. The power of one
4. Having a theme in mind
5. Watching your backgrounds
6. Timing and anticipation
7. Don’t be shy
8. Point and shoot

This is an episode packed with useful, practical information, but if you love interviews don’t worry. We’ll be back next week with another awesome guest.

If you found this useful and would love more detail, don’t miss Ralph’s next free webinar, where he will be going much more in depth about his favorite tips for taking great travel photographs.

Duration 45m 41s.

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Jen Loong (龙晓灵) is the snap-happy founder for a new type of travel tech startup that marries photography with social impact. Jen’s vision is to start an empathy movement, where vanity can create social good with real income opportunities in developing communities.

Living truly as a global citizen tracing her upbringing in HK, Vancouver and Shanghai, Jen has since travelled to 42+ countries photographing underprivileged communities, and speaking five languages in total. Her stories from the road can be seen in the Huffington Post, VICE, Globe and Mail, just to name a few. You can view more of her experiences in running the inaugural North Korea Pyongyang Marathon, farming in a Nepali women’s co-op, and dancing in the matriarchal Mosuo tribe in Yunnan on Instagram @loongstoryshort.

To marry her passions for deeper social impact and story-telling, Jen is launching her own venture, Wandersnap – a travel photographer for-hire platform as a means to offer job opportunities around developing worlds. Creativity should not be a first-world privilege. Jen’s venture has been accepted as one of 24 from around the world as part of UPenn Wharton’s Global Social Impact House cohort for 2016, through which the venture will come into full fruition.

At 28, Jen leads by example in how millennials can make a difference in communities around the world. CampaignAsia most recently nodded her as one of the “Top 20 Women to Watch in Asia,” crediting Jen for both her career and personal pursuits. In her spare time, she teaches indoor spinning in Shanghai, and is currently the Asia brand ambassador for Kfit (Asia’s ClassPass-like platform), encouraging more Asians to partake in sweaty adventures. Beyond fitness, she had also previously served as a Child Rights Ambassador for HK to the United Nations in Geneva. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia in Finance and Economics.

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We recently found this article at the Matador Network website: 17 female travel photographers who slayed 2017and it got us thinking that we should have more women on the show. I know we always strive to be as inclusive as possible, but sometimes it’s hard to think of female photographers in an industry that is very much male-dominated, so we were more than happy to have so many names to pick potential guests from. By the way, the list was compiled by our good friend and past guest, Kate Siobhan Mulligan, so thank you Kate!

Anyway, we found some names on that list that we hadn’t heard of previously and discovered some great work and fascinating insights into the world of travel photography by looking at their websites, so we started sending out invites to some of them and this is how we got to know our guest of this week, Taylor Roades.

Taylor is a self taught travel photographer based in Vancouver British Columbia; originally from Toronto, ON. Photography has taken her across Asia, and South America. She says she’s lugged too much gear through the Rocky Mountains, Patagonia, and the SubArctic.

Travel is what is what sparked her interest in photography, but it is telling stories of conservation, people, adventure, and culture that keeps her interested.

She works on a variety of editorial, commercial and reportage style assignments with companies and organizations that share a vision for sustainability and an appreciation for story.

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